BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are finalised."
